Adelaide’s Olympian Megan Jones produced the winning test for the dressage phase of the FEI Classics™ series at the Australian International 3 Day Event in Adelaide with Kirby Park Allofasudden, slowly worked back into peak fitness after injury kept him from the London 2012 Olympic team.

However, she was “disappointed” with the 51.5 handed out to the Thoroughbred gelding by Rustic Amber. “When I came out I was thinking more of about 44,” she said, but was nonetheless pleased to be in the lead.

Fifty percent of the four-star field were Thoroughbreds and first and second place went to horses bred for “the sort of kings”. Twenty-seven-year-old Belinda Isbister from Brigadoon in Western Australia rode her Holy Bruce by Woodman to claim second place in her debut four-star appearance with 56.80. Belinda, who thinks of Adelaide as a “local event” and only 2,700 kilometres from home, had great support from a partisan crowd in the grandstand many of whom had also made the long outback journey across the Nullarbor from Perth to Adelaide.

Advertisement